@ButchBaseball29 Two 11U teams are to good for the recreation. They have one pitcher and three kids that will swing the bat. The other 8 stand in the box and don’t swing. Recreation league sounds fine for them.
What I learned today. Apparently a lot of people have fallen victim to bad travel baseball. That hurts my heart. Travel was originally set up so the best could be challenged by the best. Apparently not the model anymore.
Huge W from SDS that might go unnoticed.
40K PXP is now with ANY players instead of a specific series.
There’s still a 5K mission for program players, but that’s way more reasonable.
This actually lets you grind how you want.
"I want to give the game [of soccer] back to the kids." 👏
Former USMNT star @landondonovan joins the @RichEisenShow to discuss the changing landscape of U.S. men’s and youth soccer ✍️
Anyone thinking mini seasons method is luck over amount of packs is so fooled.
It’s QUANTITY OVER QUALITY every-time. I’d rather have 1k packs with ehh pulls than 3 packs with a good pull.
@efirner Why do they quit? Huge majority because they are no longer competent enough to compete with peers. That’s why practice is so important (for soccer, early engagement is crucial),
“Burnout” is a term invented as an excuse for lack of love or competence in the sport.
@efirner Are you open to kids having some struggle and difficulty or would you prefer they live in bubbles? I see and hear a lot of virtue signaling and kids are much worse off for it. Parents are responsible for 90% of how kids turn out.
@PaulSpacey Futbol is a part of my life. We as a country are bad I mean historically bad. Hang in there too. I’m sure your listeners aren’t interested in data and facts. I just gave you physical issues the mental ones are even sadder. Sorry I had to use my hands to tweet this.
@efirner Everything in life is a risk and every action we take breaks us down in a miniscule way.
Strive for something great or accept mediocrity like the 99%.
I’ll take the first one.
@nextlevelbb The data is clear if 17% of parents think their kid is getting a scholarship when only 1% do it’s the industry that feeds the delusion. 25k-30k wasted on a dream.
The biggest scam in the travel baseball tournament industry.
Mandatory stay to play.
It makes the tournament organizations look like criminals.
Expecting parents to donate more money to them to stay in overpriced rooms so they can get a kickback is lunacy.
My son and I went to the gym late last night to work out some stuff after 3 HS games worth of not hitting the way that he wanted.
The session had both a data component and a feel / cue component. As a 17 year old who now has high 60's / low to mid 70's bat speed he has struggled in the last week - specifically against low velocity pitching - to let the ball travel deep enough to get good flush contact. Point being that we had a specific thing to work on.
So on the technology side we're using Blast to bat speed, attack angle and VBA, and we're using HitTrax to monitor contact depth in addition to the outcome stuff - exit velocity, launch angle, distance and direction.
We also were using two different pitching machines - one offset to the left side, the other offset to the right side. In terms of cues what we ended up with was:
- As deep as possible while still being on time
- High pitch posture, flat bat path and adjust off if needed
But along the way we tried all sorts of stuff - everything from trying to hit a ball to the hot dog cart in oppo foul territory off the left hand off-set machine to trying to find middle of the field ball flight from the right hand offset machine to just going pure let it eat anywhere ball flight off of either machine to score a runner on 2B.
In my mind, the best instruction environment for hitting is just a conversation that revolves around:
- What were we trying to do vs what did we actually do
- What signal can we get about why we did what we did
- What adjustments do we need to make to bring our results closer to the intended outcome on the next swing
But if the instructor and the player don't even speak the same language...man that conversation is going to be pretty limited in its effectiveness.
Because he's 17 we're now able to have these kinds of conversations - with all of these various layers. But the critically important part of the whole thing is that this is an actual two way conversation. Meaning that he's telling me how he feels, we're looking at the data to correlate the feeling to the outcome, we decide on how or if we need to adjust intention for the next swing and we just wash, rinse and repeat that same cycle over and over and over.
I wouldn't - and I didn't - coach him this way when he was 12. We used the same tech stack, but the data we paid attention to was a lot more limited. Because that was the level of depth he was able to have a productive conversation about at that time.
I'm also exceptionally fortunate that at 17 years old he's still playing and I still get to have these conversations with him.
Being a youth baseball parent is hard.
My 7-year-old loves the game—wants to train all the time.
Talked to a dad whose son just went through the travel ball gauntlet… all the names, programs, connections.
Felt the FOMO…
Then it hit me—we don’t need to chase everything.
We just need to enjoy the game and let them grow.
Any advice?
@tan0rwhite91 It’s a factor.
We don’t all learn and improve the same way (same players can have same stimulus and improve differently) but ultimately you need to engage early (very young) and put in a huge amount of time to have a shot at fulfilling your own potential.
My friend just got a $20k bonus at work
He’s 45, married with 2 kids
Has ~$25k in student loans at a variable rate around 5%
Here are his options:
Invest the bonus
Put it toward the student loans
Take the family on a much-needed luxury vacation
What would you do?